Of Christmas Past
by Lasgalendil
Summary: Some secrets should not be shared, some dark deeds once buried should never see the sun, some spirits once sleeping should not be woken. Leave the dead to silent slumber-they cannot live again, and he is both naïve and fool who tries to raise them.
1. Chapter 1

**AN: Between CotBP and DMC, Will and Elizabeth return with her father to England to seek his family's approval for their intended matrimony. As a present, Elizabeth brings her fiancée to his hometown on Christmas Eve, only to be confronted by the haunting secrets of the Turner's tragic past.**

**Dedication: For J-Horror, for her kind reviews and endless encouragement, her wonderful stories and friendship, and for introducing me to the strange and exciting realm of dead wet girls. If you're reading J, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and in my very best Humphrey Bogart voice, ****_Here's lookin' at you, Kid. _**

* * *

Christmas Eve.

….and it is cold. Bitterly cold.

It is said that absence makes the heart grow fonder, that even the most gloomy of childhood haunts will incite memories of happier, more innocent times, and it will be with wistful regret one leaves again…

Yet for myself at least I do not find it true. For me this visit holds neither peace nor rest, and I find no solace here. In the nine years of my absence, the Isle of Britain it seems has lost none of her cruelty. Chill winds whip, staining skin a deathly pale, invisible fingers prying through woolen cloak and fur lined mitts alike, leaving no warmth behind until my very blood runs blue. Above, the sky is grey and overcast as I remember, a great shadow of cloud that overhangs this spic of rock and sand like an omen or a curse. And the dead…the dead lie cold and still in their graves, not but bones and bitter shreds of rags, broken and forgotten under the sandy Scottish soil…

Scotland. I left it behind me nigh nine years ago now, but I suppose the severity of its shadow has never truly departed, merely sunk like the sun below the horizon, eternally there, unforgotten…

…unforgiven.

"Is it much further yet?" She pants beside me, gasping in the bitter cold. White ermine muffs her hands, silver fox fur lines the hood of her lambs' wool cloak, and a simple brooch of sapphire and silver sits beneath the pale flash of her throat. Her dark eyes are wide, bright, teary with the whipping of the wind, so curious and expectant, cheeks and nose flushed in rosy determination against the wind's cold wrights. I find that she alone along this abandoned seascape is beautiful.

I tell her so. She laughs gaily, and places her mittened hand in mine. She swings her arm, presses my fingers, smiles with all the innocence of a sister and the merry impatience of a young child, and asks me, yet again: how much further?

"Not far." I tell her. 'Not far."

She thinks it a real treat, a rare gift, one she is quite pleased to give. And I? I will accept it for what it is: a misunderstanding. For outside London lies an abandoned manor house, kept only by few servants and staff, furniture shrouded like dusty corpses, doors locked and fireplaces empty. Yet those same hearths grew warm again upon our arrival, those drawn white sheets pulled back to reveal mahogany and silk cushions, brass stands and ebony bookshelves. Every nook and cranny gone thoroughly over, every story told until she had exhausted her memory, every precious plaything and childhood trinket, every much beloved book opened fondly like greeting a long-lost friend…and here in her old house I see her once again as a child, her freckles, fierce joy and untamed innocence, and I think suddenly of a stolen summer aboard the _Dauntless._

"It's a carpet," I say.

"No, it's a _magic _carpet." The girl pouts, sitting down cross legged in what she insists is "Indian" style. It's how they sit in India, she says, her cousin Hattie has an Indian maid who prays thus, so this is the way we must sit. But I must take my shoes off, she whispers worriedly, or her papa will notice marks on his favorite tapestry and will know we've been playing with it.

We are both bare-footed, and I glance around nervously as she demands I take her waist, 'so as not to fall off.'

"Fall off of what?" I ask. We're sitting on the wooden flooring of the _Dauntless,_ tossed gently by rolling waves. At the moment, we aren't likely to fall from anything.

"The carpet, of course, Will."

I squint into her freckled face as she turns to look at me, then I glance suspiciously at the floorboards under the gold-threaded tassels of the tapestry-that-would-be-a-carpet. "Why would we fall off the carpet? And what's so magic about it, after all?"

"Oh, Will, don't you read?" The insult comes like a sharp slap in the face. She is teaching me to read, however impatiently, and I hang my head, hands falling from her warm sides. I no longer wish to play her silly, childish game.

I stand.

"Oh, Will, I'm sorry, I forgot! Honest and truly I did," She cries earnestly, still perched absurdly on that woven tapestry, one small hand clutching my wrist. "Please sit, please do!" Her dark eyes are soft and sad, sparkling in her pale face, so eager yet full of bitter disappointment…

She is young. So naïve. So earnest and innocent, treats me like a favorite toy yet insists I am her fastest friend…but Elizabeth's eyes are looking plaintively into mine, and who am I to refuse her?

I sit again. She scoots around like a dog chasing his tail, and faces me. "It's a magic carpet because it can _fly_. In Shaherizade they use them all the time." She explains matter-of-factly.

But I am still untrusting. "Where's Shaherizade?"

"She's not a _where_, Will, she's a _who_! She was an Arabian princess who told stories to keep her husband from killing her-" she says breathlessly, with that same lost look she has when discussing any of her make-believe adventures.

"That's dreadful."

"I think it's quite romantic, actually." She shrugs her skinny shoulders under her dressing gown, and I am again appalled at what she finds romantic. In another of her leather-bound tomes, Odyseus and Penelope were apart for 20 years, separated by the sea-goddess…she says it is so beautiful it makes her cry. I told her if it was beautiful she shouldn't cry, and that it was actually very, very sad. She says that's because boys don't know how to cry and therefore don't understand stories that are romantic. I told her it would be more romantic if they had been together, and then it would have been a happy story instead of a sad one. But she insists that boys are positively dreadful at knowing what is romantic or not, and that naturally I would assume so.

"But it's also a _what_. The Arabian Nights, or A Thousand and One Nights-that's with an N, by the way, not a K, is also called Shaherizade after her because she wrote them, at least, supposedly." She continues. "But anyways, that's beside the point. The point is, this is a magic carpet-perhaps one woven by Penelope herself, that would make it especially magic-and it can fly."

"How do you know it's a magic carpet?" I ask. She seems so intent that I almost believe her…and yet there remains this: were there magic flying carpets, they wouldn't be found just anywhere. But she has read so very many books, her family of such high esteem that she wears dresses of cotton and lace, silk bonnets and sashes. Were anyone to possess such a thing, it would indeed be her.

"Of course it's a magic carpet, Will."

I ask her why isn't it flying now. 'Because we haven't yet said the magic words."

"What magic words?"

"Why, _Ali Baba's_ magic words, of course!" She pouts. "Who else's?" And with that look of supreme long-suffering across her freckle spattered face, I dare not so much as think about wondering who might Ali Baba be, and just how his magic carpet and words have managed to find themselves aboard _the Dauntless_ with her.

"Now take my hands." She whispers. "Close your eyes."

I comply. Her hands are surprisingly warm, so delicate and small in mine. Her skin is so smooth, so child-like, soft like lambskin or silk, and I feel clumsy and awkward, ashamed of how large and rough my own hands must feel against hers. But she says nothing about my hands, merely squeezes my fingers tightly in hers, a tiny tremble of ecstasy in her voice as she whispers _open sesame_.

"Now we're flying." She says breathlessly. "Do you feel it?"

Steady rise and fall of the heaving ship, the gentle whipping of the salty breeze that billows the sails…and a strange, giddy lightheadedness, like the warmth of drinking a cup of wine. She is sitting so near to me, her hands in mine, I can feel her smooth skin against my palms, smell her sweet breath in the air, so uncomfortably and yet so contentedly close…my heart is racing, my hands sweaty and shaking. "Y-yes," I whisper.

"Where should we fly to?" She asks gently. But I have never been on a magic carpet before, and she seems so much more confident than I. In the last years I have had not the liberty of playing pretend. Fantasy and imagination have been stripped from me like my childhood, and I stumble over my words, ashamed. "Where can we fly to?" I ask.

"Anywhere you like," She whispers. "Anywhere in the _entire world_. We could go to Egypt to see the crocodiles and the sphinx and all the white cotton and the yellow Nile-it's the largest river in the world, you know, or we could go to Arabia and see horses running in the sand and smell the coffee and tea and taste date trees and fig trees, we could go to Cathay and find silks and spices and meet all sorts of people with white make up and straw hats who have funny looking eyes that squint up at the corners and drink tea just like Marco Polo-" Her honeyed voice drones on, mesmerizing and melodic, describing in tantalizing detail everywhere she has ever read in all her adventures in Shaherizade or other books, every sailor's tale she has ever overheard, every old map her eyes have ever spied she lays out in a whirlwind of fantastic colors, tastes, and smells and suddenly we are flying above all these places she describes, and my closed eyes too see the brightly painted parasols and the paper houses of Edo, the centuries-old Roman roads running like white rivers through the surrounding sands of Arabia, a wondrous world of bright white and deep blue surrounding the ice at the ends of the world…

"We could even fly back home to England if you would like-"

"_No!"_ I shout, and find my eyes have flown open and that magical moment has passed forever beyond my grasp. She is pale and shocked, wresting back her hands from mine, suddenly afraid. There has been no magic, no Arabian Nights or Sheherizade, no flying at all. We have been only what we are now: children, two foolish children, sitting on a stolen tapestry on the deck of a sea-tossed ship, nothing more.

But we are no longer children bound for a newer world, no longer two young lovers sitting in London before a roaring fire pouring over her forgotten tomes. We are shivering in cold, trudging through the sandy soil near the shore, grey clouds above and the roaring waters beside. She has shared her secrets, her soul, and now with that same sincerity of spirit she wishes to know mine. But there are no long lost treasures here. There will be no fond memories, no hallowed haunts, no dolls dressed resplendent in muslim and lace, no straw bonnets with ribbon, no secret swords made clumsily of wood hidden all these long years from her father's prying eyes…

No. Here there is nothing. Nothing but an empty cabin like a sailor's widow overlooking the sea, alone, abandoned, and bereaved.

"Look, look there-!" She says merrily, eager eyes upraised to the horizon. And yes. There. Beyond the edge of the fishing village, past the small sloops and pier, there lies the house that death destroyed.

A sudden blast of wind. I shield my face from its keening shriek. She lets out a cry, whipping hair stinging her squinted eyes, with one hand holds her fur collar tighter about her slender neck, bowing her head against its fierce fury. It is a talisman. An omen. The wailing wind as a watch guard set for the churning grey waters on the horizon, warning me to heed and to turn from my path. It senses our presence, knows our purpose, sets its will against our weary feet, and I know now what I have so long since suspected in my heart of hearts: I am forbid to return here. And she should never have come.

Garish clouds roll in from the horizon, thundering waves roar ominously against the sad spit of beach like a cheerless, surrendering sob in the chill winter air. For some secrets are not meant to be shared, some dark deeds once buried should never again find the sun, some spirits once sleeping should not be woken. I wish not and will not disturb the dead from their silent slumber.

They cannot live again, and he is both naïve and fool who tries in vain to raise them.


	2. Chapter 2

The hill is barren and bleak, brown tuffs of sea grass rising from the bitter ground, edges etched in sharp white ice. It is a lonely winter.

She stands beside me, suddenly uncertain, aghast at the difference between her childhood home and mine. Her mother dead of a long illness, that we share. She sought life in the New World to forget the horrors that clung like specters and shadows to this sad one, same as I. And yet our stories, though converging, are so dreadfully different.

The roof has long since begun to sink, the thatching blow away by the ripping winds, beams sunken and foreboding like a whale's white skeleton, jutting suddenly from the sand. The door has fallen from its hinges, rotted and ruined across the threshold. That no one has removed it I am not surprised. The village whispered of a curse upon this house, full of widows of men who died at sea, of sickness, of grief, of death. No one would wish to live here, nor to warm themselves in a fire forged from its woeful wood.

Shivering in the cold, Elizabeth stands still and silent, as though waiting for me to speak. I turn, but find I have nothing to say. Let the crumbling stones, rotting wood and stark emptiness of this unholy sepulcher speak for themselves.

"_This _is where you family lived," she whispers.

"Yes," I say. "This is where my family lived." Yet it is but only half a truth. This is also where they died.

For that twisted, fallen door is the same door which they carried my sister in, still and pale like a girl's rag doll, hair and clothes tangled and matted with ice and salt, pathetic and bedraggled as a newly shorn sheep, utterly wet and wretched. And still I find my mother is screaming, wailing her name, tearing her hair, beating her breast as the fishermen who found her lay her gently in my father's arms, the fingers of one frozen hand still clutched around that crimson cap.

My dear little Nan, scarce three, dead these fifteen long years. Here I stand wretchedly with the woman I love, that guilt ever and again before me. For fourteen years ago it was with another girl I clasped hands and stood in this same doorway.

Elizabeth I saved. Nan…I sent to her death.

We stand in the small doorframe, Nan and I, a shelling bucket clutched in my mitted fist. She adores shells, delights childishly in cockles, pale clams and limpets. She loves the sea, takes every small trinket of washed-up treasure in her pale palms to wonder, wide-eyed. Slimy seaweed, dry, hollow driftwood, even the still rotting skeletons of floundered fish. It is cold, but Nan wants to go shelling, to trundle down the coarse sands of the winter waves and find what baubles she may.

My father says she has true Turner blood. Says the Turner's have always loved the sea. He laughs, kisses her, calls her his darling girl, bundles her pale hair under her dyed woolen cap, a present from him for all his sailing, for his Turner blood that has kept him away these last three years, returning to find me no longer a toddling babe but a grown boy, and to see the daughter he had never yet met. We're to go shelling, he says. I am to watch her play, to fill up the bucket with mussels for supper.

Nan's dark eyes are wide and eager, already staring off to sea. I frown, turn to my father. Tell him it isn't yet low tide, that cold water still covers most of the cove, we will find nothing for an hour at least…

My mother stands by the fire, slender fingers unloosening her braids, pale hair unbound. She smiles mysteriously, dark eyes winking in merry mirth. My father turns, catches her gaze, and she blushes crimson. He grins, tells I'm a smart lad, claps my shoulder, ruffles my hair and says, "Now away with you!"

I am too young to know why he wishes to be alone with my mother. Only that they are hiding something from me, some secret they have not shared. And now while all the village boys are playing together in the square, I am to spend the afternoon alone watching my sister like a nursemaid.

Fifteen years. Standing again before this sorry sepulcre I tell myself I was too young to be so cruel, that it was petty, childish jealousy that caused my hand to move, to toss her much-beloved cap to the winds to fall where it may, that it was chance and terrible chance alone that it might be blown into the frigid grey waters, that it was merely a spirit of carelessness not spite that caused me to turn my back, that it was a mistake, a horrible mistake and an unfortunate accident not murder that struck down my sister, my sweet, dear little Nan…

But even now that excuse brings nothing but the taste of salt and bitter wormwood to my mouth.


	3. Chapter 3

Silently we tread into the tomb. I hold her arm, guide her gently over the crumbling threshold, that fallen door, peer into the shadowy haunt of my past. The roof is long since blown away, the beams sunk in, and over everything lies the sickening stench of rot. This haunted hovel is nothing but a mildewing mausoleum in languid disrepair. Someday soon it will be gone, nothing left on this sorrowful shore to show my family indeed ever lived or died.

To the right is the small hearth, abandoned and empty, chimney stones scattered and broken across its floor. It is empty and cold, holds neither warmth no cheer. I shudder, for that is the same sad hearth where an iron poker lay, red hot in the flames, and in desperation to save my mother I grab it heedlessly, bring it down against the skin of the workhouse man who after my father's abandonment came to claim me but instead sought to know her. There is a terrible cry, the sickening reek of smoldering flesh, the popping of fat and shrinkage of skin. I raise the weapon again and stagger back as his huge fist finds my face, sprawling me against the scalding stone of the chimney. I fall, scraped and senseless from the blow. The crackling flames of the fire rise, not inches from my sweating face, and he curses me, curses my mother cowering on the floor, pries the poker from my outstretched palm, places his foot against my groin and frightened tears boil off my lashes as he holds that red-hot poker over my streaming eyes. My skin is seared, I am screaming…

He threatens to blind me. Snarls to her to send me away, to let him have his way or he'll blind the little bastard-!

I am seven and small. Sobbing and sick at heart. I do not wish to be blind, nor burnt, my flesh already a raw and red from the fiery heat…do not understand what he wants from my mother, only that she should give him anything, anything rather than let me die... He tells me to scream her name, singes my brows with that fiery brand until I feel my very heart will burst in agony. _Mama!_ I plead, _Mama-!_

I watch in horror as she turns away, dark eyes streaming. "Go on, man." My mother gasps. "_Do it then!_ I druther have me boy be blind than t' grow up knowin' what 'is mother be naught but a whore."

But I am no longer young nor naïve. Know now what it cost her to whisper those words, that in desperation and doubt even then she would not give up the only dignity left to her. Cowering on the floor she was weak and wretched, but even in dire poverty possessed of such poise and pride…

Yet there is nothing a woman possesses that cannot be forcefully ripped away. Bitterly do I know it. The workhouse man is craven and cruel, and before my disbelieving eyes rapes not her body but spirit. That burning poker is removed from over my frightened face and he raises it again and again, each blunt blow breaking bone, her outstretched arm, fingers sundered instantly flesh seared and steaming. The next finds her skull, the sound like the crack of distant cannon fire, blood bubbling like a spurting scarlet fountain. Helpless I lay on the hearth, watching as he reduces the woman who birthed me to nothing but a shivering heap of rags and burnt, blackened blood.

Her piercing shrieks fade. I am silent, stricken. He stands over her, panting lustily, and she lets out a soft, soft moan, her head twisting limply on her thin neck, small breasts rising with every belaboured breath. Slowly, sensuously, he raises that now cool, cruel club of iron and with a fiendish cry brings it down across her swollen belly, over her unborn child-

A sharp hiss of breath. I start, and find Elizabeth's slender fingers held fast in my quaking fist, face white with pain. I drop her hand as though burned.

"Will?" She asks, uncertain.

The floor is earthen, unstained, no traces left of that sea of spreading blood. But closing my eyes I remember it clearly, edges uneven, lapping like waves, sand growing smooth and swollen, glutted as though by sweet red wine. And on opening them again, they are pricked with fearful tears that freeze upon my lashes. Wreathed round with that spreading frost, I find my eyes are yet burning, burning as though the heat from that poker so long ago were searing them still.


	4. Chapter 4

The stone is chilled, cruel fingers of cold seeping the heat from my skin. I care not. I sit upon the hearth, face laid pressed into my hands. These were the spirits I feared to waken, to stir up from their silent slumber to wander the earth anew. For here in the shrill shrieking of the wind, sequestered in the shadows of this horrid house, I find the ghosts of Christmas past have surrounded me once more.

Slowly she sinks next to me."Something dreadful happened here, didn't it." She whispers.

Something dreadful. Something wicked. A black stain of sin that can be hidden but never fully washed away. "Aye. We were poor. My father left us. I know now my mother was dying of consumption but I didn't understand it then. She wanted me to go away to the workhouse, but the man who was sent for me…" I raise my eyes to hers."He knew my father was gone. Knew she was alone and helpless and tried to harm her-"

Here her dark eyes prick suddenly with tears, her own horrors and nightmares aboard the Pearl. Virtue, virgin, a woman's honor…what care I for trifles as meaningless as a lord's title that can be easily bought or sold. Why a man should reject or refuse a woman because she is weak and easily stolen from by others far crueler than he I shall never understand. It is a woman's _spirit_ not her body that defines her as chaste. For I love her, and suffice it to say that were she ravished I would love her, love her still, ever so much more tenderly…but no. For the worst moment I have seen, and it was quickly past. But that hellish fear haunts her still.

"I tried to help her, but I fear I only made things worse. He beat her, beat her within an inch of her life, and I was powerless to stop him." That guilt hangs heavily in the deepening gloom. There is a spirit here which feeds on death and sorrow, and it has been woken anew with ravenous hunger.

"You were only a child," she whispers. "What happened here wasn't your fault."

"She was with child, Elizabeth." I say. "She was with child and he _beat _her. I had to bury the babe the next morning…and not three days thence I buried her." Her dark eyes are wide in horror, dark eyes like my mother's and sister's, like that tiny, still-borne babe's, and I find I can no longer bear to look at them.

I am torn, lost and languid, forced to look upon this crumbling house full of guilt of fear. For there in the corner is the fallen headboard, the bedclothes are long since faded, torn, picked apart for the nests of mice and gulls, only tattering threads and molding mounds remaining of the mattress my mother died upon.

Late in the watches of the cold night I heard her weeping. She would pace listlessly in the deepening darkness, come when she suspected me sleeping, place her hands in my hair like a priest's benediction, pleading _God, don't make me watch me boy die_. Her gentle palm laid against my cheek, fretting over me, coughing into that bloodstained kerchief wracked with consumption and grief.

And if there were tears on my skin she would know I was merely pretending to sleep, would know I too had been weeping, and my pain and sorrow served but to grieve her needlessly and more. I was a child of seven, but shouldered the guilty burden of a grown man, my sister's death, my father's absence, my mother's illness and wasting sorrow…and it was with dry eyes I wept, in silence and stillness I sobbed, so sleepless and damned I thanked my father for his harshness and abandonment, thanked papa for teaching me anguish that never passed my lips and tears that would not fall.

And God, in impotence or injustice, in mocking mercy or cruel compassion granted her request. Not a fortnight passed before my mother would be beaten blind. Three days later, she would be dead. Often I too have sought from Him either penance or forgiveness, and have feared what final price I must pay, for blood must have blood to cover it, 'begun by blood, by blood undone,' without its shedding no remission. But it is not for myself I fear, but _her. _ Everything I have loved I have turned to ash, indeed, it was my medallion that sent her nigh to her death, my father's foolish hand, his forgiveness that doomed us both. How I have feared, hoped, prayed fiercely since the day we met that she might be a token of my forgiveness, not merely granted as a Passover lamb to be petted then slaughtered. For I have dreamed, dreamed many times in the lonely watches of the night that I am here in this very hovel, those faceless fishermen again at the door, that limp and lifeless form once more in my father's arms, bedraggled and drowned, yet that small face turns to mine, dark eyes empty…and it is Elizabeth, not my sister, who stares wretchedly back at me-

I gasp as her warm arms embrace me from behind, draw me back into her breast, tremble in agony and ecstasy as she damns propriety and holds me, holds me with a sister's sweet innocence and a mother's fierce love. With a sighing sob I have surrendered and she brings my face softly to her own, kisses the very tears from my lashes as hers flow mingling with mine, her heart throbbing warmly beneath my ear, the sound so far distant yet so terribly familiar…

Cuddling close beneath thin blankets for warmth, I would wake in the night, listen for the sound of her heart, feel the rise and fall of her breasts in my back and know she yet breathed. She was wasting away, heart heavy with the loss of Nan, the loss of my father, now that unnamed, anonymous babe and her sight as well…

I wake in the morning to find her stiff and cold, dead arms encircling me still, the only comfort left to her in this bleak, barren world and I too was wrest from her failing grasp. I weep against her wasted body, beg her wake, beg her take me with her not leave me so alive and so alone…but she is silent as though sleeping, resting so content and still I knew even then that she had gone to be with my sister and her still-born babe.

Though only seven, I was stronger then. For now I am a man, and encircled again by a woman's arms I find that my spilling tears will not be dammed.


	5. Chapter 5

Shadows wash over us like watery waves, ominous grey clouds coursing between us and the distant sun, a terrible tide in the growing gloom.

We break apart.

Elizabeth is silent, searching for something to say. But the crumbling cabin about us has posed no questions for answering, merely stands as a stark statement of grief and death, for which there is only requiem, and not reply.

"I wish I had known," she finally chokes. "Will, had I known I never would have brought you here-"

"Had you not brought me here you never would have known." I say. "It was my burden to bear, and what happened here happened long ago."

"And yet its sadness haunts you still. It may have happened long ago but it has never fully left you, that much I see. All these long years I have considered you friend, I mean to marry you, Will, but suddenly it seems as if you are a stranger."

I bow my head, both astonished and ashamed. For how kindly has she called me liar.

"There can't be secrets between us, Will." She says earnestly. "I lived with one for eight years and do not wish that for you. For they will out, and it is dreadful when they do. I never meant to divulge to you I had stolen that coin, and there was no worse moment than being saved only to realize I may lose your friendship over so small, so petty a thing."

So small, so petty a thing…and how I wish my own guilt were so lightly cast away.

"Then if I have seemed untrusting, or reluctant, forgive me my reticence. It is a heavy burden to bear, and I thought that if secret you would not have to share this pain."

"Then I hope with the same sincerity that shared you find it a lighter." Her pale lips brush burning against my chilled cheek.. "But what you have done you have done in love. There is nothing to forgive."

I am silent. For the darkest, most desperate weight of that burden I am yet loth to share. Of my mother I have spoken, of my father's absence, she knows…yet in all these long years the name of my sister has never yet passed my lips.

She sniffs. "We should return to the village. Buy a wreath to place on her grave-"

I smile sadly. "The dead need no decorations, Elizabeth. They cannot see, nor hear, nor feel. They are at peace. Let them lie."

She shakes her head. "She birthed and raised you. Protected you against great harm and at so high a cost. Were it not for this woman I would not have you…I at least must go to speak to her."

My heart is heavy. "If you must." For I remember a cemetery of obelisks and great stone, headstones and mausoleums of marble and granite, bold words carven harsh and cold in commemoration, the houses of the dead more resplendent, more fine than those of the living. Her mother lies dead under the cold soil, a marker of grey granite proclaiming her name to the empty sky, a holly tree planted over her grave. That name will last for hundreds of years, that stone for thousands more, and the seeds from that twisted tree will bear fruit and their daughters after them and though her name be forgotten her memory will yet live on. The poor are not so, and how soon they are forgotten.

Elizabeth lays roses and lilies on the tomb, a wreath of honeysuckle and forget-me-nots that her pale hands have twisted, lays most unladylike on the cool green earth and reads snippets of poetry to her long dead mother as though greeting her after long absence, continuing a conversation dropped many years thence. And I know that for all her sorrows, for her manner and quick wit she maintains still some childlike charm, some sequestered innocence that no harshness nor cruelty may tame, a life not free of sadness nor pain but still full of a jubilant joy, an illusion of innocence torn forever from me seeing my sister laying limp and still, wet and wretched against my father's breast.

We are only a hamlet, no parish nor priests to inter our dead on holy ground. We are fishermen, sailors, wives and widows. The men die at sea, the women birthing babes, and our dead lie rotting upon the ocean floor, bones picked bare by crabs until nothing be left, or in shallow graves oft unmarked, scattered across the highland hills overlooking the shore, waiting, waiting still for a husband's or a father's return.

Many wait long. Others longer still.


	6. Chapter 6

Wearily I take her hand, lead her through those doorposts of deathly despair back into the sickly light of the fading sun. Not far away there is a hill, a small ridge overlooking the sea, a karn of rock, shell and sand that covers the bones of the Turner's who have died here.

There are no headstones.

Raised piles of rock, scattered sticks upright, the beam of the cross the only piece intact, often snapped by the wind or weathered by storm, jutting sharp and spear-like towards the sky.

She is quiet, dark eyes troubled, shudders in the ghosts of wives and widows who have lived and died, waiting, waiting here for their men to return from sea. But the sea is a harsh mistress, and will not relinquish their dead no matter how piteously they may moan for peace. And I know that somewhere amongst them, amid of the voices in the fell wind whipping her hair and ripping her cloak are the cries of my mother and sister.

Do they greet her in welcome? Does her presence ease their worry at last, know that even after their death their brother, their son, has found happiness and life at last-?

Or do they cry out in warning, hear us, hear us! Starving, drowned, dead in labor of giving life, abandoned, betrayed, abused. For these are the women the sea has robbed, made widows of them all, even the living. But it will not be so for her. I am a blacksmith, not a sailor, and the seductive call of the sea that has run in the Turner's blood for years runs not in mine. For me she holds only guilt and fear, cold and harsh, so cruel compared to the compassion of the warm woman whose hand clasps mine.

No. No, I say to the spirits, it shall not be thus. I am not like them, the men of old. For me the sea holds no sway. I have been robbed by her as much as you, long not for her freedom but for a bit of earth, a hard day's labor, for a home and family such as I lost as a child and have been so long denied me. No, I say as the wind stops her shrieking, no, I am like you.

But it is a lie. For I, like countless generations of men before me, have sent-however unwittingly-the women I love to their deaths. Before me now are the remains of three crude crosses, tied together at the cross-beam with shreds of rag and hemp, sagging and forlorn, as forgotten and forsaken as that crumbling cabin up the shore. One for Nancy Turner, my mother, and with a shock I realize that I have nearly now outlived her. The other that tiny, unnamed babe, so warm and pink and yet so still and sad, born never to see life nor draw breath, both blind, dumb and deaf.

If only we all were so fortunate, to never feel the pang of hunger, the sting of leather, the shame of guilt, the throes of fear, the dismal abyss of disappointed hopes and childish dreams. Better to feel nothing, to know nothing, nothing at all than to seek forgiveness all one's short, sad life knowing it is forever beyond one's grasp. To be birthed, live for a span of sickly years then die in pain and grief, as hellbound as a miscarriage that has never seen the sun, never suckled at a mother's breasts…No, of five Turner's, my unnamed brother alone knows nothing of pain, nor fear, nor grief, and with hollow heart I envy him.

I kneel. Reach out a trembling hand and right the marker over my mother's grave. Hello, mama. Kneeling in the darkening dusk and growing gloom, I know that in the nine years since our last conversation, my mother still has found nothing to say.

I am twelve. I stand uncertain before my mother's grave, an unopened letter from my father in my hands. The parchment is heavy and stiff, the waxen seal foreboding and unbroken. I know not what to do. For this letter, this apology, this remembrance has come far too late, and it pains me to know my father now sends his love to a wife he knows not is long since dead. For the letter undoubtably is addressed to her, and I fear to anger them by opening it.

I reach out, mean to place it firmly against that sad, crooked cross crafted crudely of driftwood and rags…but there is something hard and unyielding in the bottom corner, and a chaffed, worn hole reveals the flash of gold…

Even now I do not know if it is childlike curiosity or the desperation of hunger and want which compel me to tear open that seal with trembling hands. A coin. A gold coin of unusual and heinous markings, cold and glinting in the sickly sun. But not a coin, a medallion, hung by a slender chain.

I look to the letter, mean to read it, for I have suddenly remembered that my mother was blind. How cruel of me it would be to have left the letter here, unread and unopened, where her dead hands could not hold it nor her eyes see…

Lines. Strokes. Dots. Smudges of smeared ink and the faded blots of long dried tears. But it is those tears and tears alone I can read. There is a sudden pang in my breast. In four years of searching, I have abandoned my studies, and all but forgotten the letters my mother tried so valiantly to teach. For now I find this missive from my father is as incomprehensible to my eyes as to hers, and I begin to weep.

I try again, but to no avail. My father sent letters when I was just a lad, and sitting on my mother's lap she would read them aloud to me, speak of my papa who I was too young to remember. _My Dearest Nan_, they always begun. And this letter must begin as all have done, and it is that line and that only which I repeat to her again and again, each time more guilt ridden than the last: _My dearest Nan._

Shouts. Cries. The workhouse men have spotted me, a lonely urchin, and have come to lead me away. I have not much time…

I take that coin, press it deep in the flesh of my palm until bleeding ridges appear, and claim it as a token of a father's forgiveness. I bury the letter over her grave but tear off the portion of that tear soaked missive that bears both my father's name and his love, and on these I swear a solemn oath: I will go back to Sea. I will find my father. _And someday, Mama, there will be five Turner's buried here on this hill overlooking the sea. We will all be together again. I promise, Mama, I promise. _

But I have broken all my promises, and I know that in saving the life of the young woman standing so wretchedly beside me I have sent my father, her husband, to his death as surely as I sent my sister. Before their graves again I wonder if their spirits see, that still and silent though they may be that they know a brother and a son stand weeping above them, and that he wishes not for the first time that he too had been buried with them under the cold, unforgiving earth.


	7. Chapter 7

Snow. Blinding and bitter it is falling fast. I turn to Elizabeth, and she is pale in the cold, dressed all in white and silver, etched though of frost, soft flakes caught dancing on her darkling hair and long lashes. Her small, soft feet are standing-oh that she weren't standing-above my sister's grave.

Her dark eyes seek mine. For I have spoken to her of death, and yet there are three crude crosses here on this lonely hill, not two. "Who is buried here?" The ghost of my grown sister asks.

_You are_, I cannot say. _You have been all these long years. I have carried you with me and now we return. Wither then? I cannot say. _

It is long and hard I ponder, suffering for an answer both sincere and secret. For the story must needs be told, but the details are damning, and my guilt ever before me. So I begin, stare at the specter standing before me and tell my tale.

"You asked me once why I should save Jack, and I offered no answer-"

She squints her dark eyes, freckles sudden across her nose and cheeks, stark against the whiteness of her skin and the glittering snow. One eyebrow raises. "This is about _Jack_."

If I have forgiven him, she for her part has yet not. To her an acquaintance, not friend. There is much, so much that I have not told her. Have sought to save her grief and worry, to protect and shield her. _Will, you fool. You blind, pitiful fool. To teach a woman to defend herself with both pistol and sword but not trust that same strength of spirit that sent her heedless to rescue you. _

"Will, he would have traded your life for that ship," She says indignantly. " Regardless of what you may want to believe you can't be so foolish as to-"

But the sandy soil, the bitter, biting cold disappear, and I find myself again aboard the _Dauntless_, behind bars of iron my own hands have repaired, a prisoner…and a pirate. Upon returning to Port Royal, we both will face the noose. "You had me fooled, Jack." I say to my cell mate. "Until the last moment I was certain I could not trust you."

"In order to outsmart the fox you've got to learn some of his tricks, boy." The pirate tells me, sprawled carelessly on the molding straw. "For it to bloody work I had to fool everyone, _savvy?"_

"Then you're an exceptional liar, Jack." I say. "Forgive me. For I honestly believed you would have let Elizabeth die, and I as well."

His grin is wicked but his eyes are sad. "Better than you may know, boy. Deceit comes more naturally to me now than honesty, an' it's honest men what fall for it. A liar might know a lie when he hears it-been lying his whole life, and it's bloody hard to fool him, see? It's the good men what fall for it-oft to their harm. They ain't never told a lie, wouldn't never recognize one. An' the honest truth, son, is that you're an honest man…and a bloody fool."

I blink.

"You're _wrong_, son. " He snarls in the darkness of the brig. "I _meant_ to trade your life, both your lives, for that bloody ship should need be."

I am silent a long while. "But you didn't."

"Aye," He says darkly. "But _didn't_ and _wouldn't_ be two very different things. Will, boy," His eyes gleam with a dark humor indeed, "you swing a bloody mean oar. And if you hadn't, it would've been you lying there, mate, an' in a pool o' your own blood, like as not. I would've handed you over to Hector, an' he'd have slit your throat in a second."

I shudder, for a moment the feel of a cold, bone knife pressed inescapably against my neck.

But the pirate only laughs. It is cheerless and horrid, without a trace of humor, and I cower back against the bars, wondering what sort of life this man has known that his heart could make such sound. "We are very much alike, you an' I. So very much." He whispers with a shake of his shaggy head. " An' yet…so different."

"That I doubt," I tell him with heavy heart. "The truth is Jack, I didn't have to leave you. I could have laid you in the boat, I could have threatened you with your life…I didn't have to leave you behind for dead but I did. I abandoned you to torment and death. I'm both a murderer and a coward- no better a man than the pirates I've hated. No better a man than my father."

"You're wrong, son." Jack Sparrow says gently. "Because I would have found a way to betray you. Because _you_ don't have the stomach to shoot a man what you've looked into the eyes and spoken to. I'm a pirate, boy, been one for years an' I know a murderer when I see one. And _that_ you ain't, boy, else my back wouldn't never been turned to you."

A burning tear slides down my cheek, my father's last words to me echoing in the silence: _you're murderer, boy, a goddamn murderer…an' if God ever forgives you know I never will. _

"You're not your father. _Nothin'_ like your father. You left me to die to save that girl, not because you couldn't live with the guilt an' loss of those you loved, and it drove you mad with remorse."

I shake my head, choking back tears. "I would have let you die, Jack."

"Aye. And for what? For money t' drown away your sorrows? Eternal life free from fear o' damnation?"

No. I did it for Elizabeth…I did it for _Nan_. My silence screams. And though the words never pass my lips, he hears them.

"Gold an' life. Those two things what drive men mad, cause him to lie, to steal, drive him to murder even those closest to him. Two things what must be the worst for him are the two he can never get enough of." The gold glimmer of his teeth glows in the darkness. "You're a pirate, William, make no mistake, but the _strangest _pirate what I ever saw. I seen you, boy, seen you throw away a chance at immortality without blinkin' an eye, an' in a cave filled wi' gold what would've overflowed a king's coffers you had eyes only for that damned girl. You have any idea what sort of innocence you possess, the temptation those things would've caused even the best of men and you touched none of it-includin' said girl, might I add?"

He laughs again, that horrible, weepy, embittered sob, white teeth bared with dark eyes gleaming, and speaks the last words we will exchange on our long voyage back to Port Royal: "For what it's worth you're a good man, William Turner, a _damn fine_ man…but a lot of bloody good it'll do you."

"Will, he _used _you," She insists. "He's cunning and clever, and I can't but wonder cruel-I have a horrible notion our rescue attempt was more of his engineering than your own. A true friend would not have asked you risk your life for his, and I can't shake the feeling that were you to fall into his hands once more he would use you yet again. You're a good man, Will," she finishes softly, "but I fear you're far too trusting."

To her, like he, I do not reply.

…I can't.

* * *

**AN: Dumbledore, what are _you_ doing here-?!**


	8. Chapter 8

"Hear this now. I thought I had lost you, and had nothing left save this. It was only my life, and seemed but little to lose for conscience's sake. And yes, Elizabeth, yes, he would have." Is my soft reply. "Aboard the_ Dauntless_ he admitted it freely enough. But he never will again. He's a _good man_, Elizabeth. A good man who lost his way, who needed redemption but fearing no forgiveness was loth to seek it." Of that I am firmly convinced. For our stories are but little different. I have found my peace in the smile of a young girl, and he sought for justice and vengeance. Not all treasure is silver and gold, mate, a wise man once told me. And I have found it to be true: both of us were willing to pay whatever price necessary to regain what was once ours. I? I would trade my reputation, my patron, my freedom, even life for my dearest Nan. And he? For his ship he would barter even his soul by watching innocents slaughtered for the sake of petty revenge.

I shut my eyes. Cannot bear to look at her, fear to weep anew with my confession. For it is not of Jack I am speaking, but myself. And even here, here above my sister's grave Elizabeth is yet doubtful. "I'm still not certain I entirely trust him."

"You don't know him as I do." I say simply.

"Perhaps not." She says, eyes ablaze like burning coals. "But I'm no simpleton, Will. Your father sent you the medallion, and Jack recognized both it and you. He knew your father."

"Aye." I say. "My father sailed under him. He didn't just know Jack, they were fast friends …on the _Pearl_ I asked, and they said it was piety that moved him to send the medallion away, but I do not know. They said he felt as though they deserved to be cursed for leaving Jack to die…" My voice breaks, sighing away to a stifled sob. "but part of me wonders still whether he sent it to me to share in that curse as well, to be killed by pirates-"

Above my sister's grave she stands aghast. "Will, that's positively dreadful! Why would you say such a thing-!" For she knows only that as a young boy I set out to find my long-lost father, seeking to be reunited with him at sea. But she is mistaken. For it was not love but guilt that compelled me, guilt and childish belief that somehow I could make things right, that my father's forgiveness would make Nan and my mother to live again…

When I was a child, a thought like a child, spoke like a child. Now that I am a man, I have done away with childish things. The dead have departed, and I may go to them, but not they return to me. My mother, my sister, and my father as well have passed on, and I alone am the only Turner left.

"My father and I…Elizabeth…I, I fear we did not part on the best of terms."

For there are not two but three crude driftwood crosses rising starkly from the pale earth.

A leather belt makes a make-shift whip, and its sharp sting crashes across my back. In the right hand even a simple cord becomes a cat of nine tails, for no worse weapon was ever wielded than a father's wrath. I am silent. I will not cry out. Why should I plead piteously when in my heart I know I deserve my punishment?

'Bill, I'twere an accident, 'e's naught but a boy!" My mother's small hand clasps round his wrist, halts the next blow of the stinging whip through the sheer force of her relentless love. Cowering on the floor I look up into my father's bloodshot eyes and know now that he wishes our places had been exchanged, that I should have died, and she had lived, that given the choice between his two children he indeed would have chosen her, and that I have cheated him. My father _hates_ me, hates me for my sister's death, and I will never be forgiven: : _you're murderer, boy, _he shouts,_ a goddamn murderer…an' if God ever forgives you know I never will-!_

Another blow. My mother's bony fist has broken his nose, blood and tears pouring down his remorseful face. "You're a drunk. You're a damned drunk, Bill Turner, an' I won't 'ave it!" She cries. "You get out. You go. GO-! An' you come back _sober_, Bill Turner, or don't you come back a'tall!"

She was beaten, blinded, her babe killed mercilessly, coughing blood in consumption, seeing her son starving to death and yet for the rest of her short, miserable life she remained forever faithful to him, watching, waiting, standing out in the cold by my sister's grave to look out to sea.

…And yet even with all our penance, he never did.


	9. Chapter 9

A lone wolf howls. The sea-birds flee. Snow falls softly upon the shell-strewn shore, bleak and barren as a white-washed tomb. Before my feet lay three pitiful crosses, crooked and crumbling in their final throes of remembrance. Perhaps they know, like the dead beneath them, that this is the last visit to their hallowed haunt, and that on leaving no footsteps will ever again disturb their sacred slumber, and they will be forgotten from man's memory beyond recall. They have weathered the long years for this moment and this alone, and on turning they will sign in relief, crumbling to ash, scattering stark and grey across the virgin snow.

"Will, who is buried here?" She asks again.

"Nan." I state simply.

"_Nan?"_

"My sister."

"You've never _once_ spoken of a sister-!" She whispers fiercely, but that diatribe comes to sudden stop, halting and hesitant, smoldering stare flickering and dying like a flame in raging wind. She sees me stricken.

_Have I not? Have you not known, from the very moment I met you, that I am both your brother and friend? Have you not seen, not guessed the truth-?_

But she is naïve, her innocence stinging worse than her anger. She is earnest and insistent, both childlike and cruel in her questioning. "When did she die." She chokes. "How."

I look out beyond her, to the churning waves of the grey sea, wicked and cold in the December wind, breakers pounding restlessly, roaring against the smooth white sand, possessing neither pity nor remorse. And I see, as clearly as all those years ago, the scene before my closed eyes every night as I sleep: a still, small form tossed relentlessly in that terrible tide, fingers of one flailing hand still clutching at that crimson cap.

Nan's wide eyes are again before mine, and my words are but barely a whisper in the winter air. "She drowned."


	10. Chapter 10

Nearly fifteen years to the day, the wind mutters mournfully from the mouth of the sea. The soft breeze is salty, cold and clear, no longer a gale-storm of guilt but a pitiful plea. Save a small spike of wood in the crude shape of a cross, there is no more here to mark my sister's grave than the weight in my heavy heart. Someday they both will be gone, and she will sleep forever forgotten, eternally alone. And I, I will not be buried with her, for I love another dearly and my road ends not here with her but with the woman I will soon call wife. In the stillness of a winter's silence my sister pleads with me, a plaintive pittance, for the shore is but distant, churning grey waters and white, shell-strewn sand…

I turn to Elizabeth. "Will you do something for me?"

There are tears in her dark eyes. "Whatever you ask,"


	11. Chapter 11

The water is sickeningly cold, bare flesh numbed and white, utterly bloodless against its bite. Endless waves, grey sea, grey sky, a world where color and cheer have neither power nor meaning. For this, this is the cold crypt of sea-faring folk, undulating waves like sirens so enticing that for freedom they would leave their familiar shores, forsaking all others for this eternal expanse, entombed forever in a lover's cold embrace. The sea is a craven mistress who consumes those who love her, and still will not be satisfied. Even now she roars against the sand, scrabbling fingers grasping for what prey she may chance upon, always starving, never satiated, swollen with greed and gluttony she rises higher, faster, currents stronger, foamy fingers taking what they may…

One day she will swallow it all, land and sky, yet it will never be enough.

Elizabeth watches worriedly, dark eyes squinted against the cold and salty spray. I am shivering, bare foot and bare armed, the lowering tide eddying and hissing angrily about me, shearing sand and stone, wishing, willing, wanting me to fall into its watery abyss. The sand though coarse falls like liquid silk through my unfeeling fingers, soft as a young girl's hair… My dear little Nan. That sorrow is ever and now so poignantly fresh before me.

The iron handle is biting and thin, the laden bucket heavy and unwieldy. "Come on, Nan." I huff, "Or mama will come a-looking for us and catch cold again!" Only silence greets me. I turn, stare over my shoulder, and for the first time realize my sister is no longer behind me. In stunned silence I see that in my shadow there lies only one lone set of footprints, that my sister has not followed me at all, and with horror hear a plaintive wailing in the whipping wind. Above the raucous roar of the raging sea another sound rises, that of a shrill voice, screaming.

The shelling bucket falls from my hands.

Years from that moment I stand here yet again, and suddenly in the streaming sands and frothing foam my fingers encounter a familiar shape. I draw it up. The shell is smooth and cold, now so small in my mannish hand. Before I could scarce make a fist over it, yet today it disappears into my quaking palm. A limpet.

Water roars about my feet, stings my bare flesh. It is cold, bitterly cold, as though the blood has turned to ice in my veins, skin stark white, breath rising in gasping clouds I am shaking, trembling with the unbearable cold and yet I must go on. It is my penance, my purgatory, my punishment, a bitter, blasphemous baptism in the December tide. For I could not reach her, the water was too cold, too deep, the current too swift and strong, our screams too weak, the villagers, the fishermen, my father too late to save her…

My father is a sailor of a sea-faring family, since boyhood a swimmer. But even to him this cold is unbearable. His strong strokes falter, floundering, feet slipping in the shallows sending us face first back into the churning, raging waters. I am shaky and sick, drifting and tossed in consciousness, waking like ebbing waves falling further and further from me. _No papa, go back-! _But I can no longer see, nor feel, nor move, and he continues on, sand beneath his feet wraps his great coat around me carries me to the cabin smoke rising from the chimney blotting white sky my mother running _Nan_ I try to tell her _she's still out there it's all my fault you must find Nan…_

Of his two children, he saw and rescued only one.

The tide rages around me as I scrub the shells until they are free of sand, no grit clinging to their many crevices. Their polished sheen travels up my arms, beads my hair…I look to my trembling hands, cracked with cold, white skin broken and bleeding, and they too are encrusted in ice-

My name is called. I turn back to shore where Nan sits like a silver spectre against the deepening night, small lap filled with shells, dark eyes wide and worried. "Will," she calls again. "Will-!"

I shudder. I mean to go to her, ease her fears, but the shrieking sea betrays me. I fall. Beneath the waves the world is eerie and white, so cold it burns, warping like melted glass, sand falling away under my fingers like my father's feet so long ago, breath rising in swirls of fog gasping on salt and foam I struggle towards shore wretched and wet, the echo of Nan's screams ringing in my ears like the sea's distant roaring in a bone-dry conch. Ice. Diamonds. Smell of salt and soot, stable and hay, my mother's bloody kerchief and Nan's red cap, a sailor's scarf all pouring ebbing rivers pirates attack glint of gold my father's medallion a pirate cove a pirate's teeth, scent of clove and cinnamon, roses and honey a pale white arm like the neck of a swan gleaming against the virgin snow-

"Give me your hand!" My sister screams. "Will, _give me your hand-__!_"


	12. Chapter 12

The night deepens, darkness growing, spreading grey and violet over sea and sky alike, while wet, white snow dances silently, falling to earth without a sound. Alone on the shore in the inkling night, winter blankets us both.

"I don't know what you were thinking," Elizabeth chides. "and I don't give a damn about propriety, William Turner, give me your other foot!"

I clutch my cloak tighter across my shaking shoulders, breathing furiously on my trembling hands. She has bundled me up like a mother with a newborn babe, fussing and fretting until she is nearly as soaked as I.

"I can get it myself-" I attempt to argue, but the words do not form. I cannot speak, jaws quaking, and cannot dress, my frozen, unfeeling fingers trembling too much to clasp my cloak or draw on my boots.

"I should've listened to Hattie," she states, ramming the leather over my leg with such ferocity I am thankful for my unfeeling feet. " 'Never, never, _never _marry a Scotsman even if he be the last man on earth.' "

"W-why's that?" I stutter, shivering.

"Because you're so foolhardy even the Romans finally built a wall to keep you out rather than try to knock sense into you! Wading out in the ocean! In winter-!" She waves her hands wildly in the air, reminiscent of a certain pirate. "Will, you're lucky not to catch your death of cold!"

I try to keep that half smile from fading from my lips, but to no avail. Her fastest friend, yes, and yet her words unwittingly bite even deeper than before, no innocent insistence upon her Christian name ever so cruel as her chiding.

But she sees, sees as clearly as though through a looking glass, closes her dark eyes, ice clinging in brittle beads to her long lashes. "I'm cruel, you know." Elizabeth says sadly, strings of hair like wrapping seaweed frozen to her pale face. "All those long years I've teased and tormented you, and when I was old enough to know better, I baited you still."

The tide rushes in, fanning fingers freezing with every lapping wave, scintillating sheets struggling for shore like the souls of lost sailors longing for land. But the sea, unremorseful, unrelenting, holds them forever fast. Fog rises in sickly streams from her mouth and nose, and here, here where my sister drew her last breath I find an answer at last: "You didn't know."

_You didn't know_.

"Which is a kind way of saying only careless, then." She says softly. Yes, careless. Childish carelessness, a mistake, an accident, in the innocence of my hands have I done this…She looks away, downcast, shivering in the shrill wind and biting cold, searching the shrinking shoreline in the snow.

We stare, together, for a silent eternity at that distant, crumbing cabin, beneath the warmth of her fur lined cloak huddled together, yet worlds apart. "We're very much different, you and I." She whispers finally.

Yes.

…and no.


	13. Chapter 13

Silence surrounds us like a shrinking shroud. The world is covered in inky blackness and muted white, our fading footprints the only stain upon the virgin snow. And again, as though knowing my thoughts, Elizabeth lets my hand go to walk though these final, solemn steps alone.

A small, ruined cross, sagging and sorrowful, casting a somber shadow across the new-fallen snow…

…now littered with shells, glistening softly under a sheen of salt and ice, joined by the frozen, diamond drops of tears. I knee. Lean forward, kiss that wretched wood as gently as I would kiss her sleeping face, and suddenly I am weeping, weeping unashamedly over my sister's grave, for her life unlived for her sweet innocence and unintentional death, for her dark eyes empty in death, frozen fingers still holding fast to her cherished treasure…

_You're my sister, you're my sister and I killed you I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so sorry Nan, I love you I love you I always have I'm so sorry you're my sister and I love you-_

That sin is black and suffocating before my eyes, hot tears against my frozen fingers burning, burning against my skin, I am sobbing above my sister's grave, the snow, the sky, the cold grey waves washing over me undone and utterly wretched. I search for forgiveness as the roaring sea rages, the wind whips with the fell shrieks of the nameless, forgotten women buried here beneath shell and sand-

Shivering. Sighing. Salty tracks freeze against my face, and I find I have no more tears to cry. Darkness and gloom descending down, hollow guilt and deathly chill surround me, I am shaking in my father's arms, stirring feebly in deep shock, the world is falling, falling, Nan is falling beneath the waves my mother's face is a mask of horror-

Darkness. And now, so much more than ever before, I know that had life been fair, had God been good, it would be I, not her, lying wet and wretched, no more than bone and rags buried under the barren sand. My father cheated of his choice, my mother's sickly spirit flitting away to her forsaken children, and she, too, would choose my sister over me…

And in this terrible purgatory of nightmares and guilt a still small voice, quavering and shrill like a young girl's insists urgently: _You just _can't_ die, Will. It would be most ungrateful of you if you did. And I shan't forgive you if you break my heart…_

My fever breaks. I wake, feel the familiar lilting of a sea-borne ship, the strange, comfortable warmth of a mattress that is thick, downy and soft, the light weight of smooth sheets against skin. Wonderingly I open my eyes, smell the salty air, see the eerie shadows of light pouring in through midnight windows, swirling breathlessly across the painted ceiling…and with a shock find there is another face laid next to mine.

A young girl. Sleeping by the bedside, one pale arm under her slumbering head, covered by cascading curls, the other outstretched, arched gracefully across the bedcovers like the slender white neck of a swan…and with pain I find that her hand, her delicate, childlike hand, is pressed over mine. I am still, insatiable, unsure of dream or waking, and I drink in the pattern of freckles across her nose, the gentle sweep of her long, girlish lashes, and the feel of the soft skin of her palm against mine. And in all the long watches of that lonely night, I wonder only that this angel before me looks just like the one I lost…

Soft sigh of rustling silk, flash of silver and soaking fox fur. Elizabeth places a bare hand-that same small hand!-against my tear-strewn cheek and I take it in my own, bring her pale palm to my lips and kiss it, kiss it softly as I have wished since the first moment I met her and mistook her for my sister, stain it with my tears for her innocence and undying love, God bless her, God bless her for her sweet compassion-!

One hand in my hair, with the other she upraises my chin. "You're cold." She says simply. "We should go." She does neither press nor pry, has no room in her great heart for such a cheapened, crippled love as pity. She is fierce of heart, strong of spirit, and my sister's death will stand as sacred secret, forever unshared. I look wretchedly upwards to her streaming eyes and they are blazing with a fierce and lasting light—all the innocence of a sister, the loyalty of a friend, and the consuming jealousy of a lover.

…Yet of these she is none. She is _all._


	14. Chapter 14

Wordlessly Elizabeth offers me her small hand, raises me up again to my feet, and together we leave these soulless shores behind us.

At the crossroads I turn only once, as I did so long ago, to find that empty spit of sand no longer holds the shadow of threat nor fear. Those restless grey waters churning endlessly under the moon's pale sheen are merely wind-tossed waves, nothing more. And at that moment the bell in the tower tolls, clear and calm in the crisp winter air, free of doubt, free of guilt, free of fear.

It is midnight, Christmas morning. Nearly fifteen years to the day since my sister's death, I have finally found my forgiveness.


End file.
